How SOLIDWORKS is helping the environment: Entocycle

Monday February 25, 2019 at 3:21pm

One of our customers, Entocycle, presented recently at SOLIDWORKS
2019 Launch Event an overview of their use of SOLIDWORKS and discussed how both,
the software and the customer support they receive from us, enable their
business to achieve its goals faster and more seamlessly.

Entocycle has a powerful sustainable ethos behind its brand.
They use SOLIDWORKS to develop the production and sourcing of protein for
animal feeding that comes from insect protein – a much more ecological source
compared to soya and fishmeal.

Paul Hillman, mechanical engineer at Entocycle, says: ‘At Entocycle we're developing the world's most efficient and sustainable system to produce protein. We turn local food waste into protein-rich insects to feed animals. Protein from insects is a sustainable alternative to the significantly more land and water intensive soy or fishmeal. Our technology combines automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to bring world-leading efficiencies to protein production. We aim to help bring an end to the mindless destruction of the natural world, and hope to one day see much of the land currently dedicated to soy production returned to the wild.’

It seems this trend is not for animal feeding alone. Just recently, Selfridges customers were bugging out as products made
from insect flour hit their shelves. The department
store will stock pasta, protein bars and granola made from ground buffalo worm
and cricket flour. In November last year, Sainsbury’s became the first UK high
street supermarket to stock edible insects. The global edible insect market is forecast to exceed £406m by 2023.

Supporting start-ups, such as Entocycle, and making sure they have all the training and support they need to show return on investment as quickly as possible, is at the heart of what we do at Solid Solutions. Paul continues, ‘All of our mechanical systems have been designed and drawn using SOLIDWORKS CAD and controlled using SOLIDWORKS PDM. We're designing for various materials and manufacturing processes, using the part design, assembly design, sheet metal, weldment and toolbox functions primarily.

The ability to rapidly design and rapidly communicate design changes has been of vital importance to our engineering team, working in a fast paced start-up environment with new data from the entomologists being provided all the time means our designs have to evolve rapidly and robustly, SOLIDWORKS allows us to do that.

Solid Solutions are available at the end of the phone and replace our CAD management function entirely, allowing us to concentrate fully on our business objectives not using time up maintaining systems. Also having trainers that then become part of the support network makes communication easy and understanding of our abilities and needs, excellent.’

Paul also highlights the long-term advantage of using SOLIDWORKS, ‘Hiring engineers is made much easier by knowing they will be using SOLIDWORKS as even if they have never used it before, it is so user-friendly and quick to pick up, anyone with CAD experience will be up to speed within a matter of days.’

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